


Glimpse

by Swiftlet (SphinxTheRiddle)



Series: Cycles of Return [3]
Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: F/M, Mild Sexual Tension, Slight pining, self-indulgent fic, two introverted losers circle each other with growing heart eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23828620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SphinxTheRiddle/pseuds/Swiftlet
Summary: The first time he sees her naked, dancing through the waterways like a Frostbreak mermaid, is also the first crack in a wall he'd not even realized existed.
Relationships: Female Fateless One/Enconeg Holn
Series: Cycles of Return [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1716907
Kudos: 2





	Glimpse

Glimpse

The first time Enconeg saw her bare was entirely an accident.

She had arrived under the cover of night, as she was wont to do, fleeing the tangles in the Weave that they swore she was no longer bound by. It was strange to her, this constant sense of returning; in truth, she preferred the sunbaked canyons of Detyre, the stark and lonely beauty calling forth some inexplicable thing within her gut. Yet for all that, she forever found herself trekking the long road back to Dalentarth, deep into the bowels of the primordial Sidhe. At the time, she could not explain the whys and wherefores, quietly stricken by the relief she felt every time Holn’s Lake came into view.

Even in her other life, home was an…uncomfortable concept. She contented herself with the excuse of Summer Court liaising and a free place to lay her head at night — all things that were at least half true.

But even in retrospect, that first naked dive into the lake on an early morn was uncharacteristically impulsive. She had exchanged her trollhide armor the night before for soft peasant’s garb, intent on removing the gore and oiling the desert-scorched leather—the first sign of something deliciously amiss, for she never did such things out in the open. By the time she awoke, her travel-ached body was misted in dew, a pleasantly deceptive precursor to midday marsh humidity. She found herself drowsed, languorous, stretching her muscles with feline laziness.

In that just-woken haze, she stripped bare. Gooseflesh prickled along her skin upon contact with the cool air, little shivers tracing down her spine. Every sense was heightened, her feet luxuriating in the feel of deep green mosses between her toes as she padded softly to the jump point behind Enconeg’s gear shack. With a final twist to remove the tie from her hair, Dryden leapt, a perfect dive into the darkly cool waters of the Mere.

It was the splash that first alerted Enconeg—a sudden, quick exclamation in the morning silence. He had to shake himself from the instinctive flare of alarm, pushing back dancing images of tentacled leanashes gleaming grey and pale, like corpses below the surface of the water. He had seen the bedroll beside the gear shack; he knew Dryden was near. Even so, uncertain in the morning fog, the graying fisherman crept to waters edge, the fear still a trickle behind his ears. Over-reacting, that’s what he was, but he had to be sure.

And there she was, stroking the byways of the lake, like some Frostbreak mermaid out of the old Varani legends. Viper-eyes gleamed up at him in quiet observation once she came back ‘round, the first non-predatory expression he had ever seen on her face.

He would remember that expression years down the line—the moment she became tangible in a time of magic, in a land of the ethereal.


End file.
